Flickr: jburwen

They’re saying Chicago is at it again.

The reactions of pundits, legislators and local news anchors to headlines that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was caught on tape spewing profanities and looking to make money by selling President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat have ranged from disappointment to frustration. But no one has been surprised.

Does Blagojevich’s alleged political-corruption crime spree, as prosecutors describe it, symbolize how the rest of the country views Chicagoans? More important, do we perceive ourselves this way? Do we expect our politicians to behave badly?

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Well, yes.

We’ve heard it all — Crook County, City on the Take, etc. Living and dealing with political corruption, large and small, is part of our culture, as much as deep-dish pizza and looking forward to the Cubs’ next season. The city’s long history of organized crime, greased palms and backroom deals has inspired filmmakers — and generations of dirty politicians.

Chicago also boasts a more recent and colorful history of pols convicted of lying, cheating, bribing or doing whatever they please. Throughout, taxpayers seem unaffected by their greedy leaders dabbling in pay-to-play schemes. It isn’t because we’re ignorant, or profiting in some way from our politicians’ graft. It’s because we’ve come not to expect too much of our easily tempted lawmakers.

Still, most Chicagoans maintain their pride in their city, spending more time defending it from outside critics than calling for reforming it. Former Mayor Richard J. Daley, an intimidating figure surrounded by a wide-reaching bribery investigation, called Chicago “The city that works.” It’s a place that will welcome you to stay as long as you pay your dues, and where it pays to be scrappy. It’s a place where if you work hard, even at a low-paid blue-collar job or as a small-time community organizer, you will pick up experiences that will set you on a path to something better. It’s a place where success stories are born.

In 1991, the Chicago Sun Times (the newspaper Blagojevich wasn’t interested in gutting) published what many would consider a non-story. No local alderman had been convicted of political corruption that year, a fact that the newspaper deemed worthy of front-page treatment. Since 1972, nearly 30 aldermen had been convicted of various crimes. A year free of such scandal was not only a cause for celebration but maybe cause to speculate whether the newspaper reporters had really done their homework. Many of us Chicagoans had begun to expect political scandal.

Since that year, we’ve endured the trial, conviction and sentencing of former Gov. George Ryan, a rare Republican in this traditionally blue state. He’s now serving six-and-a-half years in prison for misusing state funds and for his role in allowing unqualified truckers to receive driver’s licenses through bribes. I remember running into Ryan’s entourage while covering another story in downtown Chicago. I hung back and watched the beaten man step out of a black Lincoln on his way to court that day in 2005. Curious onlookers felt sorry for him, despite the fact that his inaction in investigating bribery in his administration led to the deaths of six children in a 1994 Wisconsin crash caused by a trucker whose driver’s license was obtained through bribery. I remember one local man, who was snapping photos of Ryan, say that Chicago would behave for a while following the scandal, but once the media hype settled down, it would be business as usual.

Chicagoans admit they live with a sense of inevitability when election season rolls around. The city is run the way it is because there is no other way, so why vote for an underdog when the winner has already been chosen?

We daily accept what we’re told. It takes a long time to fill potholes and get permits to do just about anything because our heads of state have certain rules in place that everyone must follow, unless you learn that you can pony up cash to the right friendly face for faster service. We notice that family members of pols and alliances of powerful people receive preferential treatment — but isn’t it about who you know everywhere? And as the effects of a crumbling public transit system begin to show, and an Olympics bid takes precedence over assisting Chicagoans as they cope with a doule-digit sales tax, factories shutting down and union strikes, who takes the blame? Most, including many in my immigrant family, will point their fingers at the federal government, which they criticize for taking our money to ply a far-off war. Why attack a city that welcomed us onto its broad shoulders with open arms?

To give Chicagoans some credit, a history of corruption cannot be overcome by one honest governor — which Blagojevich had always purported to be — or an ambitious prosecutor. Chicagoans view themselves as a separate entity from the rest of the state. One honest governor would need several terms in office to take on the city’s politicians. Unfortunately, the trend among them has been to work Chicago politics to their advantage rather than denounce it.

In the wake of the startling revelations of Blagojevich’s alleged trespasses, people around here are looking sheepish, even embarrassed by the now commonplace descent of national news media asking us for our reactions to another politician’s shortcomings. But they reserve their shock for why it took so long to catch Blagojevich doing something worthy of arrest. Some say that they saw it coming, or ask when Mayor Richard M. Daley will be woken up by FBI agents some weekday morning.

Our latest blemish comes at a time when we were getting used to patting ourselves on the back for our role in Obama’s rise to the presidency. We were getting more positive media coverage for our handling of Obama’s huge Election Night rally and general goodwill than those “First Cities” of Los Angeles and New York. We’ve been eating up the photos of Obama with his children on the south side of the city and his trips to restaurants that we’ve eaten at.

Then this had to happen, and “our boy” is forced to distance himself yet again from a broken system and Chicago politics. Those in my district may be at least momentarily distracted by rumors that its was Obama’s chief of staff — and our congressman Rahm Emanuel — who tipped the Feds off to the whole Blagoevich mess.

It’s time now to heave a deep collective sigh and look up, specifically at the banners on light posts throughout the city’s downtown, to America’s agent of hope and change, our Obama. Although we know Blagojevich may not be the last local boy to go bad, we can still ask our last great hope, “You’re still on our side, right?”

Agnes Jasinski is a freelance journalist in Chicago, her hometown.

David Axelrod, Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel (WDCpix and Wikimedia Commons)

In the days following his election, it has become clear that President-elect Barack Obama is bringing a little bit of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s City Hall to Washington.

The White House chief of staff will be Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), a former Daley fund-raiser. Emanuel is stepping down from his district on the city’s northwest side to help Obama govern.

Obama’s senior adviser will be David Axelrod, a long-time friend and ally who wrote speeches and ran campaigns for Daley for almost 20 years.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

And a key player on the Obama transition team is none other than William Daley, the mayor’s younger brother and rumored to be in line for a Cabinet post.

What will it mean for the country to have so many denizens of Chicago’s City Hall in charge?

Well, speaking as a Chicagoan who’s been watching these guys for years, you can put aside any notion that the White House will be run by left-wing ideologues. By and large, this is a bunch of pragmatic deal makers who view ideology — especially extreme left-wing ideology — as a weakness.

In this regard, they’re a lot like their boss. Mayor Daley acts as though he’s above ideology — in part because he has so much power he doesn’t really need it. Yet for all his power — and, believe me, he controls absolutely everything in Chicago, including the city’s legislative body — Daley is primarily a deal maker. He’d rather win you over than roll you over, though he relishes the second option if the first one fails.

That may explain why Daley seems to have a deep affinity for Republicans, especially President George W. Bush. In the aftermath of the 2004 presidential campaign, Daley sang in the Karl Rove chorus, assailing the national Democratic Party as a collection of “Washington elites” who lost the election because they “don’t like faith-based organizations” or people “who might read the Bible or read the Koran.”

I don’t know why Daley was so harsh on Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee. Kerry only had nice words for him.

But I’ve always felt that Daley got along with Republicans because he knew they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, challenge his dominance in a Democratic town like Chicago. In contrast, his Democratic underlings — everyone from aldermen to congressmen — are constantly maneuvering to be well-positioned to replace him when he leaves office. After awhile, that sort of ceaseless plotting can make even the most powerful of politicians paranoid. In fact, I suspect  Daley endorsed Obama for president to get him out of Chicago once and for all.

In any event, Daley’s admiration for Republicans is mutual. In 2006, Bush spent his 60th birthday whooping it up with Daley at a restaurant on the city’s near south side. More important, the president has poured in more than $15 billion to help Daley expand O’Hare Airport — a huge boondoggle in which the city forced hundreds of homeowners in Bensenville, an adjoining predominantly Republican suburb, to sell their homes. As you can see, power politics is truly a bipartisan affair in Chicago.

William Daley has picked up his brother’s affinity for Republicans. So much so that if young William had not been raised in the household of his father, the legendary Democratic Party chieftain, Mayor Richard J. Daley, I doubt he would even be a Democrat.

Examine William Daley’s resume, and you’ll see he’s essentially a businessman who would fit in well with what’s left of the moderate wing of the Republican Party. He was vice chairman of Amalgamated Bank, and then a partner in a corporate law firm before President Bill Clinton brought him to Washington as a special counsel. He soon upset the Democratic union base by helping negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

OK, so Daley did spend a stint as a Democratic partisan when he chaired Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. But less than a year later, he went to work as president of SBC Communications, the giant phone company based in San Antonio, Tex. Daley went from fighting Republicans to urging their legislators and regulators to pass legislation that, as The New York Times put it, “would make it easier” for SBC “to roll out high-speed Internet service.” That, my friends, is flexibility.

Now, it’s true that Emanuel enjoys beating up Republicans. But I sense he does so more out of a love of winning than advancing any particular Democratic ideology.  He reminds me of Frank Kruesi, Donald Tomczak, Tim Degnan and other great mayoral arm twisters who terrorized City Hall on behalf of Mayor Daley through the years.

Guys like these never seemed happier than when wielding the considerable power they spent their days accumulating. If they have a philosophy, it’s a simple one: “Crush your friends — just for the heck of it.”

In the long run, I predict Emanuel will be reviled as much, if not more, by Democrats as Republicans, who won’t feel quite as much pressure to obey his commands.

Finally, there’s Axelrod, the spin artist supreme. He’s at his best on election night, when he parades before the cameras to explain why a loss for his candidate is really a victory, or a victory for the opposition is really a loss. For awhile I was starting to think his reputation was overrated — after all, how hard can it be to run the campaigns of an unbeatable mayor like Daley?

But in retrospect, I’ve come to realize that it can’t be easy making the Daley Machine look efficient and smart.

Not to bore you with too many sordid details from my hometown. But consider the four years preceding Daley’s 2007 run for reelection. His administration got nailed for awarding $100 million in affirmative-action contracts to a politically connected white-owned firm. His top City Hall aide went to prison for overseeing a hiring operation rigged to favor the well-connected over the well-qualified in tests and interviews. There was the Hired Truck scandal, in which his Transportation, Streets and Sanitation Depts, doled out $4-million worth of contracts to private truck drivers who did little more than campaign for the Machine on Election Day. And some city employees got nailed for running a heroin operation out of his Water Dept.

Have I forgotten anything? Oh, yes, the Red Line and the Blue Line — two of the city’s main train lines — fell apart for lack of regular repairs.

Yet, with Axelrod writing the propaganda and running the campaign, Daley still won re-election with more than 70 percent of the vote. That proves that either Axelrod’s a genius or the voters of Chicago are fools.

Either way, spinning for the White House will be a breeze.

Ben Joravsky is a staff writer for Chicago Reader newspaper, where he writes a weekly column about politics, and the co-author of “Against the Tide: The Middle Class in Chicago.”